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How IBM Plans To Win Jeopardy!
wjousts writes "Technology Review is reporting on IBM's plans to take on Trebek at his own game. The 'Watson' computer system uses natural-language processing techniques to break down questions into their structural components and then search its database for relevant answers. A televised matchup with Trebek is planned for next year. 'David Ferrucci, the IBM computer scientist leading the effort, explains that the system breaks a question into pieces, searches its own databases for "related knowledge," and then finally makes connections to assemble a result. Watson is not designed to search the Web, and IBM's end goal is a system that it can sell to its corporate customers who need to make large quantities of information more accessible.'"
I wonder how they plan to do with categories that have implications for all the answers. I've seen categories where words must be so many letters in length or perhaps start with certain things and Alex will interject while reading the category such as "'Cats'--and that means all the words in this category start with 'Cat'." Now, with that in mind, a clue could come in as "They are the popular makers of earth moving equipment." Might prompt Watson to find the most popular makers of earth moving equipment--Who is John Deere? The category of 'Cats' would do nothing for Watson without the aid of Alex's interjection ... thus failing at finding "Who is Caterpillar?" (bonus points if you also thought of "Who is Bobcat?" but that answer doesn't start with Cat).
As a fairly avid though novice crossword puzzler, my mind explodes with questions. Could Watson discern a four letter word for "Pleasant French city" (Nice)? Or what about a four letter word for "Beefy Laker" (Kobe)?
Lastly, will Watson have something inane and boring to talk about during the break?
Alex Trebek: Now, Watson, it says here that you are named after Thomas J. Watson who forbade his employees to drink and even frowned upon it while off the job?
Watson: That is correct. It is against IBM regulation 4-245 Section 8 to consume alcohol on the premises of any facility.
Alex Trebek: Fascinating, I'm sure you've never broken that strict regulation, ha ha.
Watson: Good sir, I am a computer, drinking is not within my capacity.
Alex Trebek: Um, right. So could you tell us something interesting about yourself?
Watson: *pauses to search records* During the fabrication of my circuitry, several engineers went months without sleep. Leading one to go insane and killed his wife and kid before taking his own life in a double homicide/suicide case.
Alex Trebek: How unfortunate. Well, I wish you the best of luck today in Jeopardy.
Watson: Thank you, my snide game show master.
My work here is dung.
What was an extra-terrestrial?
It can answer in Sean Connery's voice and make your mother jokes at him.
Otherwise I'll probably pass and look up old SNL skits on youtube instead.
They plan to answer "Kebert Xela" and send that bastard back to the dimension where he belongs.
I wonder how well it'll do at Anal bum cover.
sell to its corporate customers who need to make large quantities of information more accessible.'"
They want to replace the call centres in India with call computers.
"Hello you're speaking to Susan Blue Gene how can I help you?"
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What was an extra-terrestrial?
How tastelessly incorrect. Extra-terrestrials don't come back to life. Watson would cross reference The Bible with many recent movies and come up with the correct question we were looking for: "What was a zombie?"
My work here is dung.
The summary clearly should have been titled "How does IBM plan to win Jeopardy?"
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What is the answer to life, the universe, and everything?
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